1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image display apparatus and a camera that are provided with functions of communicating with a server through a network and transmitting and receiving image data to and from the server, and an image communication system that distributes the image data by means of the image display apparatus, the camera and the server.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, an information apparatus such as a digital camera and a personal digital assistant (PDA) that has an image display has been in common use. This apparatus is provided with a communication function of connecting to a computer network so that a variety of information can be exchanged. Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 8-315106 discloses a system that adds an identification signal of a cameraman to image data recorded with a digital camera for the purpose of distributing the recorded image with a charge. Specifically, the system adds the cameraman's identification signal to the recorded image data to thereby specify who is the cameraman of the recorded image (i.e., an original owner of the image data) distributed on the network. Then, the cameraman can charge a user of the distributed image for the use.
The conventional information apparatus such as the digital camera cannot store a number of images since the capacity of an internal memory is limited. The recorded image may be transmitted to the server to reduce the burden of the memory with the use of a technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 8-315106. In this case, the use of the network and a database charges therefor, and it is therefore necessary to carefully designate a server to connect and identify the user. Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 8-315106, however, merely teaches adding the identification signal to the recorded image data to ensure the payment for the secondary use of the image data. It fails to teach designating the server to connect or to which the image data is transmitted.
Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 5-165932 discloses another system that makes it possible for a plurality of users to connect to a server at the same time so that they can edit the image data while they look at the same image.
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is used as the image display in many of apparatus that are provided with the above-mentioned image display function. If several persons look at the same screen, the image is sometimes difficult to see because of the direction of the liquid crystals. In this case, it is possible to distribute the image data to a plurality of apparatuses with the use of a technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 5-165932 so that several persons can look at the same image on the plurality of displays at the same time. Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 5-165932, however, merely proposes a processing method in the case where several persons edit the same image. The mere application of this method has a problem described below. Since each person can freely enter a command from each apparatus, one person enters a command of “switch to the next image”, whereas another person enters a command of an “enlargement”, for example. If a rule were adopted in such a way that another command is not accepted during the processing of one command, an arbitrary operation of one person would influence all the other persons. It is therefore impossible to supervise the images that are distributed to all the persons.